leaving the past, live authentically today

getting over love

Well, I finally lost the plot yesterday. BIG TIME. Alcohol fuelled admittedly and mad as hell but I freakin lost it. I told my ex husband a few what for’s, especially about his not so nice wife who has managed to create so much damage in so many ways; breaking family connections etc through her extreme neuroticism and insecurity. My choice name for her is far too bad to publish here and not a word I would ever usually use because it is just a bad word…but I called her it several times much to his disgust. I DONT CARE and I needed to let it out.

He tried to interfere and complicate my seeing my sons; so I let him have it…all of it..I have always been a big supporter of him as a dad, I know he loves our boys but now they are older and with everything that has happened I could no longer hold back. Sometimes you just need to say what you have bottled up for years. No going back now.

At least, after the ado, the plans to see my sons today came back on track and I am so looking forward to seeing them…it fills my soul to have those two beautiful humans in my arms. And it has been far too long. It was one of the reasons I high tailed it back here apres merde hitting le fan! And losing my job. And then getting back here and losing the man I was kinda in love with. Just to get some time with my boys. And then re-calibrate.

The days have passed and I know it really is over with yank 2. He hasn’t written, but neither have I. Yesterday prior to the dummy spit at my ex husband I was having a few Margaritas and listening to some great music. Unfortunately in my alcoholic happy haze I purchased some songs off Itunes that related to our time together and thought I would remember the good things. I was missing him.

KC and the sunshine band, one night we were having a laugh as we did on our marathon skype sessions and he put a song he really liked on by KC; ‘get down tonight’ https://youtu.be/FpoI7vK4uvY ….and we danced..well..as much as we could listening to it and carrying on on skype. I loved that he just let loose in front of me, this lanky 6’3 but handsome man could show his vulnerable and sometimes childlike side to me.

Then I made the mistake of playing 2 others; Melodie Gardot’s ‘baby I’m a fool’..I put the video in one of my previous posts, and Tim Buckley’s wonderful ‘Strange Feelin’… https://youtu.be/loOzxap0YAc …he used to play that alot..sending it to me on skype.

Lost it then. Realised how much I did miss our conversations. We weren’t perfect, there were some bumps in the road, but we talked it through. He was able to do that. Not many men like to talk things through…that’s a feminine domain. God I miss that. And just talking about anything and everything that was infinitely more interesting than ‘Mrs Jone’s cat needing surgery for a bowel obstruction’…oh dear

Popular belief and past history tells me this can’t be resurrected. A relationship is like glass; once it shatters you can try to put it back together but it is never the same. For some silly reason today, sky grey and stormy, raining..I look out the window and imagine what it would be like to just talk to him again. Crazy, silly, and wishful thinking.

I guess there will be days like these. He was the only man capable of making me completely forget about Joe. I could never work out how I managed to become so wrapped up in that man. The damage he caused with his psychological ministrations. But yank 2 more recently told me I had ‘alot of getting your shit together ‘to do. He was kinda right. And in the same breath he said ‘I am not rejecting you’, knowing how sensitive I still was from my past experiences. And even though that was a little ‘pot calling the kettle black’, we were both fools, but it kind of worked. Well it seemed that way for a while.

After being back here for a couple of weeks, I realise this is not the place for me. But right now I don’t know where is. I love Sydney, I guess I will go back once I sort a few things out here. Right now that would be hard, because I envisioned being there with Yank 2 in the future. I guess time will heal that.

Isn’t it sad. You know that people come into and out of your life, some stay, some go but what I still struggle with is the fact that sometimes the ones you want to stay, go, and it leaves you feeling like there is something unfinished. I remember once after an argument where I blocked him on Skype he sent a message ‘until the next life’. He may be right.

Love and whitelight xx

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I have been struggling today. After my decision yesterday to just obliterate the afternoon and night with alcohol because I just couldn’t stand the pain and sick feeling in my stomach. It was the same feeling I had when Joe and I broke up but was also very different because this man was different in so many ways.

Fact of the matter is that he had a unique way of being able to show his vulnerability and then in the next breath he would speak strong and confidently and reiterate how marvelous he was (at times overtly narcissistic, even though having had a very recent experience with a true cerebral narcissist I knew he was not one)…at times I could not keep up with that complex to-ing and fro -ing he seemed to be doing. I think how he felt about us was similar. He wanted us to hang in there with each other and yet another time he would distance himself from the prospect of the committed relationship because he just didn’t need it, it seemed to him. He wasn’t sure about it, it was scary as hell to him I could see that. He was crazy, funny, complex, profound, childlike…it was a ride. At times I felt like I could feel his essence and then he would close off and I could not get a read on him and I remained fascinated and even though alarm bells went off here and there I could not bring myself to save myself from what I am feeling now at his hands.

We did over the times we would talk for hours on Skype discuss and share some very deep personal things with each other. Things I would never repeat because even though he has hurt me in what turned out to be a thoughtless and careless way I know that at times he will think back and feel a profound sense of loss at what we did have and he will know it was of his own making, sadly. He did not give himself the chance to experience what could have been a love experience like no other, he was scared…once I said that to him and he freely admitted it. He was capable of seeing things that others took a long time to realise or did not at all. He was a special man in my eyes, even though he hurt me.

Me, well I am reeling from the shock that when it happened it was over so quickly. Yet I get the feeling that my intuition was right many days ago when I felt that all was not good and yet I still remained hopeful that the words we both had uttered over the last month or so, after a bad bump about hanging in there and weathering the storms because we both felt there was something worthwhile in the future for us, together.

I ask myself ‘why do you do it?’ keep putting yourself out there, taking that risk, knowing it could result in exactly what I am feeling now and have felt a number of times over but each experience more or less painful than the other? The ‘experts’ in life would say I am stupid; I court this drama and to some extent they could be right but I also know that the flip side of this horrible hurt is an amazing sense of wonder and happiness that at times you feel is so good you want to bottle it and keep it forever…the upside of opening yourself up. When relationships are new, or even long but going well there is nothing like it..feeling love for the person you are with is unlike anything else. Feeling that connection, wow. And I still believe in love.

Last night in my drunken stupor I wrote a long and at times perhaps slightly rough on him email although it is what I thought was true and correct. He had done something similar to me a couple of weeks back. But I was drunk and I did preface the email with that. But in the cold light of day today when I realised he really had let go of us the hurt was back but I realised that either way it was more helpful to myself to speak in more positive terms about what we had and to say goodbye with love, so I did. With the love and care I still feel for him but I know now that he has disconnected and I have had to accept that even this early in the piece because to hold on with hope will only prolong my pain. The chances are he made his decision much sooner than the actual day he let go even if it was a difficult one he tousled with for a time. It is just how it is. Hoping for some miracle that we will somehow make it in the end will only destroy me and I have had enough to deal with both over the years and even still.

With sadness I have let go. I will allow the odd romantic fantasy of us making it in only because I know you must allow yourself to feel the spectrum of emotions and work through it in order to emerge rather than descend into the dark place.

I miss him so, already it feels as if he has been gone forever. But I wish him well.

And now I must deal with me, try to see in front of me..a future. Often when depressed you can not see a future. I will not entertain this feeling for long. I can not go back to that place. I am unmedicated, have been for 2 years now after many years on it. I have fought hard to be healthy and stay away from the dark without that artificial intervention and I refuse to give in now. No matter what. No one can help me but me.

Love and whitelight xxx

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I am not quite right yet where he is concerned, I am no longer embarrassed to say it in public..some days still..but rarely now… I talk a good game but every now and then the mad-person comes out and I have to do certain things to get my mind back to where it should be. Perhaps it is that I have too much time on my hands, have lost confidence after so many ‘no’s’ with jobs. And the men I have dated bar one have been a great disappointment I no longer can be bothered with them, particularly those closer to my age or in their 50’s; they all seem to have Peter Pan syndrome! (And they talk about us women at menopause age?!!)

And other things in my life seem so totally out of my control that it saps my strength…for a window in time. I have no sounding board lately as I have found that friends that I have called and wanted to be able to speak to have not even bothered to phone or message me back. I guess they have had enough or it just makes them uncomfortable or they are just too busy, it is that time of year. I am always introspective this time of year. And as I wrote yesterday I regularly covet solitude anyway.

Out of sheer boredom this weekend my mind has been doing somersaults (nothing seems stimulating enough, nothing at all) and once again I found myself thinking about the yank narcissist endlessly. There is so much else I could be doing or thinking about and yet there he was again all of a sudden and that familiar tug and wondering why things unfolded as they did..yes it still happens and I am writing about it today because it is better out than in. I am OK with my flaws, I own them. When I try to work out why the thoughts of him come back and haunt me as strongly as they do after longer times of no feeling about it the only thing I can think of is that he was the source that opened me up..left me so bereft and so vulnerable and the months that followed after he demolished my heart were like an opened wound that not only festered but was riddled with disease that I never knew was there and it all came seeping out…and right now I need a course of ‘antibiotics’ as the infection has not quite cleared….

I’ve done everything, I thought, to prevent it..feeling this way. So why? Why is his face still so clear in my mind and why do I ruminate over what happened on these days and just can’t let it go. What is it about him? At one stage when I was there it wasn’t so much that he had shut down on me I remember thinking why don’t I feel anything for him right now in this moment? And the only thing I could put it down to was shock. At that time I was walking around numb…I couldn’t work out what had gone wrong and I had no way of gauging what was going through his head because he simply would not not discuss anything…it was the most bizarre thing. In a normal situation you would discuss or react…he just shut down and yet he did not want me to go out..to the shops (which I inevitably did) or walking even it seemed, it was as if he wanted me there he just would not communicate with me. I never had the opportunity to talk to him about it, he never gave me or us a chance to even though it was me that walked out after so many days of deadlock…

Months have passed, I had months of depression, ultimately committed career suicide because of it all, constant psychotherapy and yes my strength has come back more and stronger than ever in a very long time but these days like this weekend and today…I feel vulnerable.

I know that after Christmas and the New Year eventually work will pick up and when I am busy again it won’t give me the time to think as much. I just wish it was now…I should love it but I hate this time of the year lately. I look back at this time last year and he and I were constantly talking and he was being really surprisingly bold even saying things like “you should look at buying us a house in Perth, we can use that as a holiday house, how much are they?”, he was flirting up a storm and I was loving every minute of it. Maybe he was lonely then and entertaining himself and a crazy part of me wonders if he is the same this year, and if he has even thought about me? He doesn’t deserve my love, thoughts or energy and I know it so why? Why now?

THIS IS RIDICULOUS on so many levels…

Maybe I should consider hypnotherapy. If I had the money right now I would hop on a plane and just get out of here for a little while. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I should just take a drive out of here and spend a few days away, from this city and this situation…..escape..

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It’s hard to tell right now. I am still in the next morning haze. In fact, it’s entirely possible I am still slightly inebriated. I did not get to bed until after one a.m. Wasn’t pretty. Had to be done. The stomping of that sucker so hard into the ground there would be no coming back from it. There was no other way…I couldn’t take the pain anymore. I’d hit my limit.

And anyway, I needed to treat it in the same way I was treated…with disdain. I’m not usually a tit for tatter but after all was said and done….it just may have worked. There is no compunction.

I’ve written a few times previously with next day remorse. A..at the imbibing! and B..regret that I did the long distance equivalent of a drunken dial..writing an email. BUT. I did not do that last night. I had no urge whatsoever to make contact. In fact I listened to every song that played without any sad memory or pain about him. Every time his imaged dared to peak my mind would immediately replace his with the gorgeous face of my current carrot…the handsome and debonair Aussie entrepreneur…he had to have clout to push the other out of my head (I had read somewhere recently where a woman did that..every time she thought about the ex she would say to herself ‘no’ and she would imagine her new partner to be…and eventually it the picture of her ex would no longer form in her mind). I couldn’t use Brad Pitt or George Clooney, I actually am not attracted to them at all, funnily enough. I’ve never been able to work out what the deal is there, except for the fact that they are damn good actors!

It sounds crazy I know. But the mind is a tricky thing and you need to fight back in whatever way you can…create new pathways. Love sucks, no, let me change that by saying it sucks when you love the wrong person. I dated a handsome frenchman once…it’s true what they say about them! But we had a lot of fun, especially on our trip all around the South of France and his stock standard response to most things was “C’est la vie!”. Too right.

This whole scenario had almost put me in the ground. It should never have got to where it got to. But it did. It is one thing to be in a bad depression but to be in one with grief from a broken heart, knowing you were deceived in whatever form (I must say..loving a narcissist is one hell of an experience..it really fucks with your mind), through loving the person you thought was the one…I know I’m not the only one who has lost love its an age old story. But something has died….a number of things have…parts of my past also and I needed to grieve it.

Now to work on getting completely out of the overwhelming nothingness I have felt in the last weeks. For the last weeks I have not been able to look forward…if I did..all I could see was more of the same and it scared me. I did not want that. I have never felt so alone and yet I isolated myself….that is depression. You don’t want people to see you failing. And many just do not know what to say to you or how to help. They can’t really. It is up to you and yet somehow it’s not either.

I do feel I am coming out of it finally. I must take it one day at a time I know but perhaps this is it? Please…..

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Probably shouldn’t write now…don’t care…actually felt OK after my first few margarita’s..now well past that..where is it in the rule book that says even though you know you are going to be a depressed nutter tomorrow you must withhold..oh feck it..sick of sitting like a mummy in Le Louvre.

Had enough. Yes I will have a bad headache, possibly feel shite about many things..oh feck it. One day in a week or so. Letting loose.

Today is the one year anniversary that he sent a connect request on Linkedin (which I have subsequently disconnected). Admittedly, he saw that I had looked at his profile…I looked. He recognised me. From when I was 16?

I am full of regret for responding to him. Admittedly 3 days later, but I responded. IDIOT.

It’s almost one of the those sliding door type situations. I sooo regret it. It had the worst repercussion through the last year of my life. The timing was fecked. I have always said, live without regret. But I regret that.

Funnily, the last day or so the pain seems to have subsided where he is concerned, there is still other shit. Now I am just dealing with the constant visions. And regret.

But I am substituting his face with the face of a lovely man who is a very successful and attractive Australian businessman. Shit, it has to be someone with presence and gorgeousness, how else am I going to escape from him. I and he had trained my mind to believe he was someone of awe. He wasn’t, but that is what my mind had accepted and plays on rote (Narcs are very good at that). I have been trying to strike that by replacing the visions and thoughts.

Not easy, programming. He helped build a story. Hilarious really. Particularly the “I have the body of a 35 year old” (amongst other gems)…he is almost 60! Yes, I guess its possible, but …HE DIDN’T when I finally saw him. Although in all honesty, I hadn’t believed that one anyway. But I didn’t care, by that time I loved him, thoroughly.

But he was full of DELUSION, and I fell for some of it. He was sort of hot when I first met him..when I was 16 and he was 25 (see photo in early post, May). Sort of. If I am to be honest, at that crucial point in time, I wasn’t sure then. How did I become so convinced this time around? I just remember an aura.

I still kinda feel sad about it. His daughter turns 12 on Monday and for days I felt like I should’ve sent her a card from Australia..stamp and all, to let her know I was thinking of her…but then he would probably bin it anyway..its different for kids these days, everything is online. But I do also remember her calling me “her” and he calling her out about it, and also her deleting all the photos from my phone when I let her mess around with it. I thought it was by mistake but these days I’m not sure. I think she may be the spawn of satan and his bride (or not, he didn’t marry her that speaks reams)..sounds awful to say that, and I love kids, and I do worry about her too considering… but lately…I just don’t know.

I hate feeling this way, I always see the best in people and struggle to see the bad. It does my head in.

Was listening to some good music though. Great Aussie girl SIA and this song in particular https://youtu.be/2vjPBrBU-TM Chandelier…Love the lyrics…I want to swing from the Chandelier…Chandelier ahh…I think I would right now if I had one!

Don’t feel as miserable as the previous days…it helps I don’t pine for him anymore…replacing his image…stopping the BS thoughts…

Now to deal with the rest.

Each day as it comes….

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It’s taken a day and more searching, because this stuff about him and desperately trying to get myself out of a bas..rd of a depression without medication and dealing with past shit is becoming incredibly boring…I can’t take much more of it. It’s bullshit. Arrrggghhh….in high octave!

I’m starting to get that part of my ‘issues’ are hormonal as well as a healthy dose of midlife transition. I call it transition because midlife crisis assumes you are a chaotic mess and I just won’t own up to that…..not without kicking and screaming …..oxymoronic but…I simply must do it my way.

I’m also coming to realise that this soul searching I was forced into by the calamity of my short lived reunite with Tornado Joe after 30 odd years is in fact an existential transition, ok midlife whatsitthingy and if anyone was ever going to have one in spectacular technicolour it’d be me!

I’m realising I have to embrace it not fight it. I have to embrace all of it. Even the him thing. And not look at it with fear and hopelenssness and all the thought patterning of the past whereby my mind allowed me to go into victim mode, to ruminate and replay reasons why I should see it that way….if I allow that then all this pain and debilitation will have been for nothing. And I will never move forward.

This ‘thing’ has been systematically stripping me of everything I have ever known…or at least the way I view things. The only thing I know for certain right now is that I have changed irrevocably and it is a good thing.

I have no way of knowing if I will ever suffer depression again, it seems very possible I will if I don’t find a way to avoid triggers and find a strength of mind that allows me to lessen the effect.

I have no guarantees that if the insidious disease that my son has does take him somewhere in the near future my ability to stay strong for my other son will be reliable, but I must try, they are both everything to me.

I have no idea what I want to do in the future as a career (I admit up til recently I saw my future with him, helping him with his daughter and sharing our experiences as we grow old together, straddling our two countries, making a wonderful life together, the one we should have had 30 years ago…boy was I wrong:(…that doesn’t matter now…it can’t), I have already lived several career incarnations, none ever really hitting the mark therefore now I am searching for that passion..that thing that will take me into my twilight days satisfied that I have done things well and for the right reasons (quite frankly part of me would be happy living subsistence on a farm in upperkimbuktawest), I don’t need to rule the world but I want to do things I enjoy, not what I am forced to from necessity…I am starting to know what I do enjoy but trying to turn that into a career is a challenge…but it needs to be done because life is too short to be stuck in a soul-less box 12 hours a day saying yes sir no sir to some twat with a ego who actually knows absolutely nothing and is proud of it.

This is a time to take risks and there are no guarantees. Nothing in life comes with a guarantee.

All I know is that I can’t just lay down and die. I can’t allow myself to fall back into the old habits just because it is comfortable and familiar…too many do that and never realise their secret hopes and desires.

The only shame in all this would be if I do nothing, follow convention and whimper for the rest of my life.

Was supposed to be psych day today but she couldn’t so I guess it is up to me to life my sorry arse out of this shitty cycle and go out into the fresh air. I’ve been isolating for too long, I realised yesterday I was starting to fear going out into the real world, that whilst I was holed up in my psycho prison I was safe and warm and no one could hurt me here. But I have been hurting myself by doing this.

It’s not easy..Last night I saw the tale end of a program about people being treated for depression by a new form of Electroconvulsive therapy and I remember the same Psychiatrist I walked out on , when he tried to get me to change and up my dosage of antidepresssant plus add lithium after I told him I wanted to try coming off antidepresssants after 17 years, wanted me to consider that also.

Bugger that! I know I have suffered depression, I know that my brain is not wired like others, but I also know that I have very good reasons why I have suffered mentally over my lifetime and it is not all about how my brain is wired or chemical imbalance it is much more environmentally based. I feel it in my gut, instinctively. I have spent far too many years not following my instinct and recently I learned that I am quite intuitive and should.

There was an excellent blog I read yesterday called “Personal Tao” their tagline is ‘Always dream even when awake’, and their page on midlife crisis and transformation really resonated with me.

Not everyone has a midlife ‘thingy’ (!!), but I am grateful for mine, slightly bewildered still, but grateful….

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I’m not sure what happened but the last day or so I have gone slightly backwards again. Actually, I do know, I took a chance to do something I enjoy and have 5 seconds of peace from my mind by having some wine and listening to music and ended up drinking far too much of the bottle, bringing up thoughts of someone who was just starting to leave my troubled mind and I’ve effectively taken the steps back.

I remember as I did it thinking I won’t feel that way because I have made incredible inroads out of my black hole, dealing with things and felt quite confident that I could partake without going down that road. He had began to not matter as much. Nearly 3 months its been.

I was wrong. I know I mustn’t beat myself up and I have spent far too much time back trying to analyse why I would want to make contact with him again. There is sometimes still, this overwhelming feeling that there needs to be a ‘do over’, that somehow it was all a bad dream and the good stuff is coming! What if he really isn’t a Narc and just completely misunderstood, it’s all some terrible mistake.

Why can’t I recognise that there is a difference between what my fantasy or what I thought he was and we could be and what the reality is.

I remember when I was with him nothing was even remotely as I expected. Even his kiss. He could not kiss (that in itself was strange because I thought I had remembered when I was 16 he was the most amazing kisser, but I was 16). His tongue seemed liked a lizards poking in and out with such frantic-ness (no technique) I remember pulling my head back for a second my mind saying “wait a minute. I wasn’t expecting that”. It was a bit like Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City) in the episode where she has what she called “Jack Rabbit sex”, where the guy humorously bangs away like he’s jack hammering the sidewalk, her head pummeling against the bedhead and the next day she can’t walk properly and her neck is practically paralyzed. And then he has the audacity to say to her when she tries to nicely say lets just leave it at that; “If I knew you were going to use me for sex I wouldn’t have ‘made love’ to you like I did”. It’s hilarious.

And now when I think about it, there were so many other things that just made no sense whatsoever. Although there were certain things I expected and was right about too. Sadly. Why the analytics still? Why can’t I just let it go? It almost feels as if there is some kind of strange ‘something’ that sits in my heart that belongs only to him. That there will never be another for me even though I know he and I aren’t meant to be in this life. It’s madness, utter madness.

Maybe that is it. Even though I have gone through much, that I needed to deal with from a psychological perspective…stuff that can stay with you you’re entire life if you let it (stuff outside of this him and I situation), my mind is still trying to sort the wheat from the chaff, compartmentalise then deal. I am so much better but there is still some way to go.

I need my psych right now, she has a way of facilitating reality in my thoughts. Some days I just can’t do it on my own, still.

I wish he would just explain to me why he said one thing and did the other. Or that we could have parted in a nicer way. I keep thinking friendship in tact, but he was never really truly my friend even.

I keep thinking that he is himself psychologically damaged and that no one will realise it nor he and that he will never get the help he needs. I want to help him, I hate the thought that he will end up on his own, no support. Crazy I know, I can’t fix what doesn’t want to be fixed. It is not up to me and why should I want to. And maybe I’m just wrong about it all?

So many people look at you when you are mentally unwell and say you look alright, you look fine. But that’s just it. The illness is on the inside it doesn’t always blatantly show on the outer. Some of the most ill have adapted so well that you will never see what is really going on unless you have either been unwell yourself and know the signs or there is a very well trained and capable eye looking at you.

I’m sick of seeing these numbered lists telling you “so many ways to be the perfect person”, follow these ’10 ways to’ and your life will miraculously be magical. This morning, a well known website posted “10 ways to know your are uber smart” written by a a young girl who may possibly be quite smart but by virtue of the fact that she is barely in her 20’s with little life experience how could she possibly know these 10 ways for sure?

The internet has become a quagmire of self help gurus, they are a dime a dozen, everyone’s an expert. This is why I only write about my own experience and try not to tell people what they should or shouldn’t be doing. I am showing that I am an extremely flawed individual still finding my way along the path of life.

I’m nearly 50 and I know that I am only scratching the surface of what it is possible to know. It seems the more I learn the more bloody questions I have! …….straitjacket again pleasssse….

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It’s a short post today. I may post later although that may be a bad idea because I have set Friday as my throw caution to the wind and just enjoy it day now. There is wine and music involved.

I have my psych appointment this morning, I have a number of sessions left before I re-commit to the real world. This has been my ‘deal with’ time, my ‘get better’ time and my ‘ask the surgeon for the missing part of your brain back that he took when you had the partial lobotomy of loving the wrong person’ time!

Should I joke? Depression, existential crisis and other stuff is not funny it’s serious, but I have had many weeks on the incredibly serious wagon and I’m getting real tired of that shit. And they say that laughter is the best medicine.

I know there is a process and time and patience is involved but I have expended an awful lot of time and energy being down in the dark hole, I deserve better…I’ve been working on better.

Realistically, the only person who can really pull you out that hole is you (and for some that is almost impossible, I acknowledge that, but not impossible). But I want out of it for good and whatever it takes I will do.

I’ve been reading some real funny stuff lately (one of my new approaches in distraction and healing…time with comedy, laughter) including a book by Greg and Amiira Behrendt called “It’s called a break up because it’s broken: the smart girls breakup buddy”. I highly recommend this book co-authored by his wife. (Greg wrote ‘He’s just not that into you’ years ago.)

I love this pearl of wisdom she wrote in her intro apparently by her granny;

“Even with all the mayonnaise in the world, you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit”….think about it!

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Changing or re-wiring your thoughts takes time and takes incremental steps. I have been taking these steps.

Every morning now, well, for a good few mornings at least I wake without that horrible dread, that ‘what now’ feeling, that pull towards the dark. And even though and yes it seems ridiculous to me but it just is, I still have him pop into my head I seem more able to allow it and then it goes pretty quickly (it is very difficult to let go of the deep love you felt for someone even if it was bad for you). It coinciding with other issues that need dealing with slows things a tad. I am starting to feel more hopeful. Less blue. More sure that even though I don’t quite know what the future holds I know there will be one. (Unless I get hit by a bus or something…shouldn’t joke about that because I did get hit by a car many years ago but that’s in the past! See, I don’t tend to do things by halves!!:)). And then there are times when I say to myself, oh, just get on with it will you?

I was going through my emails this morning and on one of my accounts I noticed two Macy’s emails. Yes that huge department store chain from America. I signed up for emails apparently when I was over there and I bought 3 pairs of shoes in one go (no, I am not a typical female shoe nut I just happened to be at the store killing time…he (now nameless) had no time for me and I had already done some of the housework, been for my walk…he didn’t want me to go out but he didn’t want me there either so I decided to keep myself occupied..and usually I hate shopping!).

We don’t have Macy’s here, I wish we did, or at least the fantastic prices and range they have….Australia and more so Perth is just so ridiculously expensive still even though the mining boom is long over.

Once again I digress. The point was even though I finally am starting to change my thoughts there are still constant reminders of him and they come from the most ridiculous things and I realise as I think that my mind had conjured up a fantastical positive memory of him but at the same time now I know most of that was fallacy. Wishful thinking. Just plain silly. But I have been told and have read that many that have been hit by the tornado of narcissism feel that way, many spend years in therapy. I am lucky my exposure was relatively short this time, but it was enough to f..ck with an already damaged mind.

Simply was not true. It is that that I still struggle with. Admitting this is hard but necessary. At times it makes me feel like I have completely lost the plot and have some weird obsession for this man (even if he was not who I thought he was..he helped construct that image), this man who clearly was a narcissist and quite clearly either doesn’t realise it or chooses to ignore it (I often wondered why he kept saying to me he wanted a relationship where both watched each others backs no matter what, he knew how to treat the ‘right’ woman…perhaps somewhere there he knew it would take someone extraordinarily masochistic to hang in there under those circumstances, with him. At the time I was so in love and blinded I wanted to give him everything he wanted and more) …I had not even considered he may be (a narc) at the beginning until my Psychologist told me after going through things in depth about our history. It’s been 2 and a half months and I still need to get it out. And I don’t want to burden and annoy people with the same old story so I write..this was part of my reason for this blog. I am not unhappy any more, I know I am still a little stuck but it is changing, I just need to talk about it…as often I need to until I don’t. Until the things that remind me no longer do and are replaced by much happier, more real and worthwhile things…

That’s how badly my mind has been in need of fixing. Re-wiring, re-programming. I always feel so highly aware of how everyone else copes and recovers from bad events in their life and measure myself against that.

That is still there. The damage runs deep. But the healing is happening too. And as I said yesterday I can see a new world of opportunity opening up and its both scary and wonderful at the same time. Still times when I beat myself up but its less and less now and I usually can forgive myself…and say go easy old girl..C’est la vie!

I guess the alternative is scary, back to reality, but seeing it in a new light…without old prejudices and biases? After a lifetime of thinking a certain way, of viewing threw a tainted window.

Yesterday, they released a survey conducted here in Australia about what makes people happy (here in Australia, now). Some of the findings were quite hilarious particularly ‘the happiest women live in Queensland’ and don’t have a partner and the men are happier with a partner. It pretty much inferred that women are happier and healthier without a man in their life!

I guess I need to test that theory now…stay single..makes lots of money..and drink lots of my favorite wine, oh and travel to the States more often to shop at Macy’s!….there..the answers been there all the time!

Like this:

Each day I wake feeling the same. His face is the first thing I see. I don’t get it.

I keep seeing flashes of the time there with him. I only spent 5 of the 8 days in total that I was in the U.S. with him and the 3 days after I left were painful and blurred.

I would wake up at all times of the night and think I was still in his house rather than the Hotel I was staying in and then realise that even though I was still in his territory and I couldn’t be further from him than I was there.

I would stare out the window of my top floor room out across the desert to the mountains that jutted out all around the incredible landscape. This place felt like it could be home to me…there was a resonance…but I could not be there unless it was with him…he already felt like the other part of me..at times I felt I could not breathe without him in my life..

After feeling the pain laying in bed and crying in I would force myself out of bed, shower and dress and take myself out to eat lunch and spend the rest of the day blitzed. Self medicated but at least not isolated or so I kept telling myself.

I managed to talk to people and inevitably it was fun because the cocktails took the pain away for a while and helped me to function. I have travelled the world on my own most of the time and always managed to find interesting people to talk to and have a little bit of fun and experience with and I decided that this had to be no different if I was to keep myself upright enough to make it to the Airport on the Saturday to make it back home where I knew the crash was going to come but at least I would have made it back from enemy lines…..